Review:

Yes, that’s a giant rubber cock on the poster for British indie short The Corpse Series. Not since Deathgasm have we seen a decent death by dildo, and while the one in this 30-minute splatter comedy doesn’t quite match those of the New Zealand gore fest, it still packs quite a punch.

James (played by director James Button) and Dan (Jason Mahone) are flatmates with a past. When Dan returns home from work one day to find a prostitute on his sofa, he’s mildly perturbed but not overly surprised. However, when James doesn’t really understand the whole ‘paying for company’ scenario, things take a turn for the bloody and set about a whole series of events that get progressively worse and more violent.

Set entirely in the house of James and Dan, The Corpse Series shows what can be done with a small budget, lots of creativity and a solid cast. While it’s often an issue for a director to cast themselves in their own movie, especially in a lead role, James Button knocks it out of the park with his portrayal of serial killer James. Along with co-star Jason Mahone, the two play off each other perfectly with razor sharp comic timing; it’s like Men Behaving Badly meets Hostel, with Natalie Martins being the girlfriend that the pair has to work around.

And there’s blood. So much blood. For an indie production to have such good special effects is incredible. It would have been too easy, not to mention a bit of a cop-out, to drench everything in blood to hide any shortcomings in the effects work, but it’s not necessary. As a horror fan for decades, watching the two friends dismember bodies in their bathtub made even me mutter the occasional “Ew” under my breath.

The short has thus far played to huge responses at both Frightfest and Grimmfest. Rightly so, this is exactly the kind of film that unites festival audiences and has them celebrating the gore and the gags.

The Corpse Series, not actually a series... yet (although the short is divided into chapters), packs more gore into its 30 minutes than Eli Roth has in his whole career. The Green Inferno? Jog on, Eli, you were phoning it in compared to this.

There are plans for two more shorts of a similar length that could be brought together with part one to form a feature. Inevitably it will be funding that makes or breaks this project. Someone, please give them the money.

The Corpse Series is currently on its festival run, after which it will be made available to view on the Official facebook Page. Until then, check out the trailer below which is, obviously, NSFW.

Grades:

Fuelled mostly by coffee and a pathological desire to rid the world of bad grammar, Daniel has found his calling by picking holes in other people's work. In the rare instances he's not editing, he's usually breaking things in the site's back end.